“H-i-s-s—it touches the eyeball, the eye is dark forever! H-i-s-s it licks up the blood, it turns round and round in the socket. Now fill the hollow socket with the lead, the hissing lead—and, ha, ha, now bring me another iron pointed like this, and heated to a white heat. Quick, quick, the victim groans, howls, writhes, and yells! Quick! Ah, ha, let the iron touch the skin of the eyeball, it shrivels like a burnt leaf, deeper sink the hissing point, turn it round and round, let it lap up the gushing blood. Now the lead, the thick and boiling lead, pour it from the ladle, fill the socket, it hardens, it grows cold—ha, ha, ha, behold the eyes of lead.”
“I see them!” faltered Hugo, trembling in his iron armor.
“And I,” echoed Balvardo—“I see them, oh, horrible, and ghastly, I—I—see the eyes of lead!”
“Quick, quick—why lag ye, man? Quick—quick, I say! The knife, the glittering knife. The Parricide howls not nor groans, but his soul is trampling on the fragments of clay. Quick, while his carcass is all palpitation, all alive with torture, all throe, all agony and pulsation, hand me the knife. I would cut his beating heart from the body.”
“There, there—the flesh, severed to the bone, parts on either side—the ribs are bared—a blow with the jagged club, and they are broken. This hand is thrust within the aperture, I feel the hot blood, I feel his heart. It beats, it throbs, it writhes in my grasp, like a dying bird beneath the hunter’s hand.”
“Quick—the knife again—I hold the heart, cut it from the carcass, sever each nerve, snap each artery. A deep, low, trembling heave of the chest; a rattle in the throat.
“I raise the heart,—still quivering on high, it gleams in the light of day, and its warm blood-drops fall pattering on the face of the felon.”
“The mob shout their curses and hoot their oaths of scorn.”
“Quick, the pincers, the red-hot pincers—but hold—that shaking of the chest, that last heave of the trunk, that quivering in every splintered limb, with that quick tremor of the lip, ha, ha, that blanching of the cheek, with the blood oozing from every pore, that thick gurgling sound in the throat, he dies, the Felon dies, the Doomsman laughs, and from the shattered clod, creeps the Spirit of the Parricide!”
Hugo turned his face to the wall, and covered his eyes with his upraised hands. Balvardo stood still as death, gazing on the vacant air with a wild glance, as though he saw the Spirit of the dead. Neither moved nor said a word. The maniac wildness of the Doomsman awed and chilled them to the heart.